Folktale purists will be driven looney tunes, but so what if the tone isn’t completely authentic—who doesn’t like to see a...
Not every folktale collection includes the words “BONK BONK BONK,” but they fit perfectly here.
This is the 21st century, and there’s a demographic sampling of readers who’ve grown up watching Warner Brothers cartoons and listening to Native American trickster tales. This book is for them. Looney Tunes fans will appreciate that Coyote falls off a cliff early in the story. Or, if the readers make a different choice, he’s attacked by wasps or eaten by a giant. The choose-your-own-adventure format allows readers to flip a few pages and sample generations’ worth of Coyote tales. (Thomas’ illustrations are somehow both slapstick and archetypal.) The problem, strangely enough, is that there aren’t enough stories here to fill the book. A segment might end with an inspired trick and an escape from Hill Monsters, or it might just peter out. One segment concludes with Coyote joining a pair of beavers for soup. Still, these 64 pages give readers an entertaining and even well-rounded look at Coyote’s personality: the trickster, fool and occasional wise man of tradition. Later books in the series have a more satisfying range of choices: Tricky Rabbit Tales, Tricky Monkey Tales and Tricky Raven Tales.
Folktale purists will be driven looney tunes, but so what if the tone isn’t completely authentic—who doesn’t like to see a coyote fall off a cliff? (Graphic novel. 7-10)Pub Date: Oct. 1, 2011
ISBN: 978-0-7613-7859-4
Page Count: 64
Publisher: Graphic Universe
Review Posted Online: Aug. 2, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2011
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Silly and inventive fast-paced fun
A zippy graphic-novel series opener featuring two comically bumbling reptile detectives.
As agents of SUIT (Special Undercover Investigation Team) with customized VESTs (Very Exciting Spy Technology) boasting the latest gadgetry, the bright green InvestiGators Mango and Brash receive their newest assignment. The reptilian duo must go undercover at the Batter Down bakery to find missing mustachioed Chef Gustavo and his secret recipes. Before long, the pair find themselves embroiled in a strange and busy plot with a scientist chicken, a rabid were-helicopter, an escape-artist dinosaur, and radioactive cracker dough. Despite the great number of disparate threads, Green manages to tie up most neatly, leaving just enough intrigue for subsequent adventures. Nearly every panel has a joke, including puns (“gator done!”), poop jokes, and pop-culture references (eagle-eyed older readers will certainly pick up on the 1980s song references), promising to make even the most stone-faced readers dissolve into giggles. Green’s art is as vibrant as an overturned box of crayons and as highly spirited as a Saturday-morning cartoon. Fast pacing and imaginative plotting (smattered with an explosion here, a dance number there) propel the action through a whimsical world in which a diverse cast of humans live alongside anthropomorphized reptiles and dinosaurs. With its rampant good-natured goofiness and its unrelenting fizz and pep, this feels like a sugar rush manifested as a graphic novel.
Silly and inventive fast-paced fun . (Graphic fantasy. 7-10)Pub Date: Feb. 25, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-250-21995-4
Page Count: 208
Publisher: First Second
Review Posted Online: Nov. 23, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2019
Alert readers will find the implicit morals: know your audience, mostly, but also never underestimate the power of “rock”...
The theme of persistence (for better or worse) links four tales of magic, trickery, and near disasters.
Lachenmeyer freely borrows familiar folkloric elements, subjecting them to mildly comical twists. In the nearly wordless “Hip Hop Wish,” a frog inadvertently rubs a magic lamp and finds itself saddled with an importunate genie eager to shower it with inappropriate goods and riches. In the title tale, an increasingly annoyed music-hating witch transforms a persistent minstrel into a still-warbling cow, horse, sheep, goat, pig, duck, and rock in succession—then is horrified to catch herself humming a tune. Athesius the sorcerer outwits Warthius, a rival trying to steal his spells via a parrot, by casting silly ones in Ig-pay Atin-lay in the third episode, and in the finale, a painter’s repeated efforts to create a flattering portrait of an ogre king nearly get him thrown into a dungeon…until he suddenly understands what an ogre’s idea of “flattering” might be. The narratives, dialogue, and sound effects leave plenty of elbow room in Blocker’s big, brightly colored panels for the expressive animal and human(ish) figures—most of the latter being light skinned except for the golden genie, the blue ogre, and several people of color in the “Sorcerer’s New Pet.”
Alert readers will find the implicit morals: know your audience, mostly, but also never underestimate the power of “rock” music. (Graphic short stories. 8-10)Pub Date: June 18, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-59643-750-0
Page Count: 112
Publisher: First Second
Review Posted Online: April 27, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2019
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